What's Seen, What's Real? (Continued)
Rapid Virtualization Indexing Performance
These charts examine the performance advantage of the new AMD Quad-Core Opteron in virtualization indexing over its dual-core predecessor. The original chart makes it appear as it the Quad-Core Opteron is 2-3X faster in VMware 3.5 and over 10X faster in RHEL 5.1/Xen.
Looking at the corrected chart though, the impression is pretty different. Now, it's obvious that the performance advantage in VMware 3.5 is truly 14-23%, and not 2-3X better. Similarly, we can see that it's almost twice as fast in RHEL 5.1/Xen but not 10X faster, as the chart above suggests.
Performance Per Watt
This chart compares the 2.0 GHz Quad-Core Opteron against a 2.33 GHz Xeon processor. Looking the the Fluent bar, it appears as if the Opteron is over twice as fast as the Intel Xeon. Of course, the number says 67% but you get the impression that it's much faster. In fact, if you ask yourself which of these bars shows a 67% performance advantage, you would most likely pick the SPECompMBase2001 bar, even though it only claims a 36% advantage.
Here's the corrected chart. Now, don't the bars now have much more accurate proportions? The Fluent bar no longer looks as if the Opteron was over twice as fast as the Xeon, doesn't it?
Frequency Scaling
Now, let's take a look at the last chart. This one shows the performance advantage of a 2.5 GHz Opteron. Yeah, this processor is not available just yet. AMD is merely demonstrating the kind of performance advantage we can attain if we upgrade from a 2 GHz Opteron to a 2.5 GHz Opteron in the "near future".
Looking at the original chart though, we wouldn't blame you for thinking that the 2.5 GHz Opteron would be 2X to 2.5X faster than its 2 GHz compatriot in the 2-processor configuration, and over 2.5X faster in the 4-processor configuration. Yes, the numbers are all printed there, but the bars get imprinted into your subconscious. In fact, you will remember how long the bars were after you forget those numbers.
The corrected chart though says a different story. It's pretty obvious that the 25% boost in clock speed isn't going to get you such large improvements in performance. In fact, you can see that the performance advantages in all benchmarks were below the 120% line.
Next, we have more chart sneakiness, from our friend at ZDNet!
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